White Sox pitching coach Zach Bove brings unique perspective to job

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The White Sox definitely were thinking out of the box when they hired Zach Bove in November as their latest pitching coach. He walks around camp wearing a black t-shirt with the inscription, “My Strengths, Their Problems,” emblazoned across the front of it.

The pitching staff has picked up the t-shirt and the mantra as their own. Bove is a former hitter who became a pitching coach.

“It’s just trying to get to the understanding of what guys are really good at,” Bove explained to the assembled trio of Sox beat writers the other day at Camelback Ranch behind the team’s clubhouse complex. “We want to educate guys on that and then focus on what they’re really good at. Don’t worry about the hitters and stuff like that and they’ll be in a pretty good spot.”

If that sounds a tad anti-analytical it is. For at least the past decade, the trend in Major League Baseball has been to break down hitters so pitchers can exploit their weaknesses, regardless of the pitches thrown. That comes from a steady feed of video and data crunching. It’s pretty old school to change that approach, but hey, why not?

The White Sox pitching staff was 20th in the majors last season with a 4.26 ERA. The starters were a tad worse at 21st in MLB with a 4.39 ERA. The starters were tagged with 54 of the team’s 102 losses.

Although the sample size this spring is very small, the White Sox’s collective ERA in their first 13 games was sixth in baseball and first in the Cactus League at 3.85.

As Sam Cooke once sang, “A Change is Gonna Come.” Slowly, but surely.

“Whatever your speed, whatever your arsenal, whatever your location—just be good at that,” Bove said. “That’s how we’re training those things. Trying not to get too complicated. This game is hard enough, so we’re not going to add any complexity to it.

“The guys are responding, you see that in the feedback process in games. The message, the training. They’re starting to listen. When we talk to them about it they’re using some of this language: ‘I wasn’t myself there.’ It’s going pretty good.”

It’s not as if the White Sox pitching staff is chocked with crusty veterans like Max Scherezer or Justin Verlander, locked in their own ways. The group is more like Silly Puddy, able to be shaped differently.

Buve, 37, has a varied background. He worked as a hitting coach at the high school and collegiate level before turning his attention to the mound. For the past three seasons, he was an assistant pitching coach with the Kansas City Royals, whose staff ERA in contrast to the Sox' last season was 3.73, sixth in MLB. The Royals finished 82-80, 22 games better than the Sox.

Bove was at one time a first baseman at Central Florida and Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla. He never pitched at any level of collegiate or pro ball, which makes this all that more quizzical.

Bove was told that it’s a rarity for a hitter to wind up as a pitching coach, although back in the day Norm Sherry, a former catcher, was the Padres' pitching coach under Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams. Thus, there is some precedence for it.

“I’ve definitely been told that more and more since I’ve taken this job,” Bove said. “But it’s just part of my journey, or whatever, so I don’t think too much about it. Maybe I have a different perspective than others. So, I’ll just try to utilize that the best I can.”

How this all plays out is still to be determined.

“I’ll let you know in a month, or maybe two months,” he said.

So will everybody else.